’Simultaneous Learning’ (SL) is a pedagogical approach aimed at fostering enjoyable and proactive music teaching. Developed by the British educationalist Paul Harris, SL has been taught worldwide for the past two decades but has not yet been investigated by a scholarly publication. We thus focused our research on the first usage of SL in the context of one-to-one instrumental music lessons by training a selected group of teachers who had no prior experience with this approach. The data was collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus group interview and journals kept by the teachers. We then used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to understand the teachers’ and students’ experiences of instructing and being instructed according to the SL approach, respectively. Based on our results, we provide a structure to their lived experiences and explore the meanings they attached to them, among which positive experiences, challenges and the influence of SL on particular skills are identified. Furthermore, we offer implications that may benefit studio music tuition based on the insights provided by our analyses.

Written teaching philosophies are a common part of applications for music teaching positions and a pivotal exercise for pre-service teacher development. However, their contents are not often addressed in the music education research literature. Using a case study of last-year pre-service music teachers at a Swedish university, I explore these statements to uncover their beliefs about practicing the music teaching profession. The results revealed four different areas of concern for the participants related to methodology, self, curriculum and students. Furthermore, the participants differ slightly from their counterparts in other subjects by highlighting aspects such as professional development or the teacher-parents/guardians relationship. In addition, they often express their alignment with humanistic or constructivist pedagogical approaches while simultaneously intending to work with extrinsic motivation. I argue the impossibility of classifying their underlying music teaching philosophies within the traditional ones in the field as such proposed by Keith Swanwick, Bennett Reimer and Christopher Small. Finally, I discuss the limitations and the implications of the results for the professional world.

There is a global shortage of music teachers, and this deficit is continually growing. While there is a considerable body of research on the sources of concern, attrition, stress and burnout for practising teachers, studies investigating the perspective of pre-service music teachers instead are comparatively rarer. This gap in the literature is problematic, considering its relevance to the development of teacher education programmes and the prevention of discouragement and unrealistic expectations among teachers-to-be. Based on the case of pre-service music teachers from a Swedish university, this research investigates the challenging aspects of the profession through qualitative means. While the results cannot be directly extrapolated to other contexts, the insights gained in this case study expand the theoretical knowledge in the field by identifying seven main categories as sources of concern, of which the aspects that are typically inherent to the profession were dominant (e.g. assessing students, teaching groups of students, etc.). Moreover, the findings reveal differences among the views of pre-service and in-service music teachers that may influence career development. Finally, I provide implications to prevent discouragement among pre-service music teachers based on the results of the case under study.

Contemporary music from the Western Classical tradition, a term usually reduced to simply "contemporary music," is widely considered as being quite under-represented on the current musical scene in comparison to the music from any other period. As a perspective from which to explore this aversion beyond the obvious likes and dislikes, our aim was to find non-observable variables or latent dimensions by means of psychological constructs modelling attitudes towards contemporary music in a relevant population, such as music teachers to-be, in order to inform thinking about how to effect a change in this aversion. In doing so, a quantitative psychometric instrument was developed, validated and applied to a sample of this population during their university training period. Retrieved data was analysed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, leading to the proposal of a second-order, structural equations model comprising three constructs identified as "Perceived complexity & stridency", "Desire to discover" and "Aesthetic respect". Results could help in a) finding strategies to address aversion, both by the identification of its latent components and their interrelations; and b) proposing a model suitable to be compared to that of other population subgroups and to be connected to other variables for testing the effectiveness of future experimental actions in the teacher training context.

The place of music in the general education of individuals is addressed from a renovated paradigm.Through a rereading of certain ideas of Rousseau, Freud, Hegel, Malinowski and Leibniz, a thesis is grounded on what is permanent in human nature and what the aims should be foreducating that nature. Later, recent advances in neuroscience are discussed in relation tothe biological and functional nature of any individual facing music. Finally, a convergence of both paradigms is discussed within the Spanish education system, concludingthat the necessary presence of music as a key pillar in education is supportedby two mainstays: for the intrinsic value of music towards the developmentof human potentiality (music “for the sake of music”); and for theextrinsic values of music given its cross-disciplinary effectson different human potentialities.

Current literature is scarce on the potential effects of combined dance/movement and music therapy on adults diagnosed with severe autism, particularly in distinguishing these effects on different areas of psychopathological disorders. We set two goals: first, to assess the effectiveness based on the score the participants obtained from the Revised Clinical Scale for the Evaluation of Autistic Behavior (ECA-R) after a series of dance/movement and music therapeutic procedures on adults with severe autism; second, to contrast the differences in effectiveness in concrete areas defined by subscales of the ECA-R, especially in its defined 2 factors and 12 functions. An overall of 36 one-hour sessions were carried out during 17 weeks on a sample of 8 participants with severe autism (approximately 2 sessions per week). During the treatment 8 measurements were taken (1 every 3 weeks) from this sample and from a control sample, which was also comprised of 8 subjects who were equally monitored at the same care center by two independent psychologists. Our experimental study seems to suggest that combined dance/movement and music therapy could be effective if used regularly for the improvement of autistic symptoms in adults diagnosed with severe autism. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Our work highlights the necessity of revising the materials employed in instrumental education, which are systematically based on a progressive development of technical abilities and, though only transversely, without a structured sequence of contents, on issues referring to the interpretation of different periods and styles. In order to elaborate teaching resources systematising the stylistic contents in instrumental education, we propose and justify the use of a research methodology from the social sciences: Grounded Theory. In conjunction, we present a guided demonstration on how to put into practice this methodological system to analyse musical performance based on the concept of Historical Performance of Music and we create related pedagogical resources. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

By means of a quantitative cross-sectional study we aim to explore to the profile of the future music teacher during their last training stage at university. Our approach addresses their sociodemographic characteristics, academic backgrounds, and musical preferences. A brief questionnaire, created and validated for this study, was administered in the eight public Andalusian universities that offer the degree of primary school music teacher. The fruits of these analyses revealed evidence that contrasts similarities and differences by university, and lead to further inquiries based on musical preferences, musical training, and pre-university interest, among other examined variables. Finally, the implications of our results are discussed in relation to the training of these future Andalusian music teachers.

In order to measure the attitude of Secondary School Students towards Classical Music, a questionnaire based on the traditional tri-dimensional model was built and validated. Items were therefore built upon the three-dimensional attitudinal model (i.e affective, cognitive and behavioural). Other variables were also taken into account in order to help for characterizing the study-population. In a first stage, 56 students from a High School in the city of Malaga were the initial sample for carrying out the pilot study. Eventually, the questionnaire was taken by 3137 subjects from Andalusia (Spain) in order to define itspsychometric values. From the first test of 30 items to the last of 25, several changes were made due tothe expert judgments, testing experiences and scale-validity tests.

Con el objetivo de medir la actitud del alumnado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria frente ala música clásica, se desarrolló un cuestionario orientado por el modelo tridimensional de la actitud. Paraello, se investigaron los tres componentes actitudinales (v.gr. afectivo, cognoscitivo y conductual) y otrasvariables complementarias que ayudarían a caracterizar a la población. Inicialmente se pilotó en un centroeducativo de la provincia de Málaga con un número de 56 sujetos, para posteriormente ser suministradoen distintos centros de la Comunidad Autónoma de Andalucía (España) a una muestra de 3137 sujetos, afin de comprobar sus características psicométricas. Nuestro primer cuestionario contiene un número de 30ítems que, tras el juicio de los expertos y los cambios en estructura y contenido, quedó reducido a 25ítems en su versión final.

Given the high-value of its resources for teaching music, as posed in the 70s by the works of John Paynter, Peter Aston, Robert Murray Schafer, Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann, Brian Dennis and others, it is easy to find literature that places Contemporary Classical Western Music as one of the top dominant trends in the field of Music Education. Our research aimed to detect the present familiarity towards this music on the part of students in their last stage for the awarding of the Primary-school Music-teacher degree in Andalusia. Also it aimed to reveal keys for possible actions to improve this familiarity. The proposed research was pursued following paradigms of the quantitative statistical methodology, with the aid of the computer program SPSS. An instrument was built, piloted, validated and concurrently-validated on a related population. Results were disappointing, putting on the table the real dimensions of a problem, together with a variety of starting-points where a plan could be built to effectively resolve the encountered situation.